The Tenner Challenge: day two - economical exploring

When I woke up this morning the sun was shining, the birds were singing (er, ish - I don't think I've ever seen, let alone heard, a bird in Leeds city centre) and after a few days of being a bit under the weather I was feeling decidedly perky. It seemed like a perfect day to drag Ash out of bed and go for an explore. One of my favourite things about living in Leeds is the fact that it's also quite easy to get out of it - in twenty minutes you can be in the middle of the stunning Yorkshire Dales or exploring an old country heap somewhere. Trains are cheap and the bus network is extensive. Exploring is easy.

Or so I thought. When I actually started to look into what we could do today, I was met with a couple of pretty massive barriers. Firstly, when you only have a £10 budget to last you a whole week, trains are actually quite expensive - even with a Young Person's Railcard. To get to York (twenty minutes away) you're looking at something close to 3/4 of the weekly budget disappearing down the drain, and a return to nearby Ilkley would take out half in one foul swoop. Normally spending £7+ on a train ticket to somewhere pretty wouldn't even cross my mind - my card would be in that ticket machine before you could shout Betty's  Afternoon Tea - but as a famous man once said, the times they are a'changing (well, for this week at least).

Right, I thought, time for a change of tack. Let's go local. Despite living in Leeds for ages, there are tons of places I haven't been. I've never been to Temple Newsam house or farm, and Thwaite Mills are unknown territory too. Let's pop on a bus and go somewhere, I thought. How wrong I was. Although you can walk around the grounds for free (which I've done before), entry to Temple Newsam is £6 per adult, and the bus fare would be significant too. Thwaite Mills (which we could walk to) would take out £3.70 per adult - and Ash didn't seem all that enthusiastic. Back to the drawing board.

A visit to Saltaire

After a bit of thinking, we decided to pop on a train to Saltaire and go for a walk. Saltaire is just 15 minutes away from Leeds by train, and a return ticket (with a Young Person's Railcard) set us back just £2.90 each.

I'm not sure if going to Saltaire really counts as exploring - I've been there lots of times before - but it's somewhere local that I really love visiting. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, named after Sir Titus Salt's mill that dominates the town. It has a fascinating history and the mill is now a wonderful Arts Centre which is full of Hockney paintings and one of my most favourite local bookshops and home/kitchen stores. It's a living, breathing little place with a wonderful park, lovely junk shops, a brewery, a canal and a real sense of community. Ash and I love it so much, in fact, that we're seriously considering a move to one of the workers' cottages when our contract expires on the flat in June. It just feels like how a home should feel.